Infinite Universes, One Grieving Mother: 'Redux Redux' is Emotional Sci-Fi Without a Big Budget

At first glance, the premise for Redux Redux almost sounds like a Kubrickian space opera: the story features parallel universes, a time-travel machine, and an infinite loop of revenge. But writers/directors Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus had a very different goal in mind. Their new film, starring their sister Michaela McManus as Irene, uses the multiverse not as a window into the future, but as a tinderbox for grief, obsession, and the slow decay of the soul.

The film centers on Irene Kelly, a grieving mother who travels to various parallel universes to kill her daughter’s murderer again and again. It’s a brutal, high-concept hook, but for the McManus brothers, it’s a way to explore some of the darker parts of humanity. 

The McManus brothers grew up on classic time-travel films and noticed how many of them lean into fantasy: dinosaurs, medieval courts, impossible worlds. Kevin says he saw the possibility for more personal time-travel stories when he saw Back to the Future and The Terminator.

“Even a movie like The Terminator, at its core, is an intimate movie about three characters,” Kevin says. “If you drop in at any time in that movie, you’ll think you’re watching either a slasher film or an L.A. crime story or a revenge movie. And then you realize, oh, that’s a robot, and he’s from the future.”

That idea to use the multiverse in a new way became the blueprint for Redux Redux. Instead of wildly different universes, the brothers imagined worlds separated by very minute changes.

“If there’s an infinite amount of universes, then the changes between them might be infinitely small,” Kevin says. “What would that do to a character who’s trying to change their circumstances by traversing the multiverse? And how frustrating would it be to find that they’re all so similar?”

For screenwriters, time travel often feels like a logic trap waiting to snap shut. But the brothers decided to simplify things by adding this rule: “Irene’s basically going in one direction the whole time,” Matthew says, because their time machine works linearly, clicking forward universe by universe. This helps to eliminate paradoxes and looping timelines.

While early drafts didn’t label universes specifically, once production began it was clear others working on the film needed more information. 

“There’s so many small details that change,” Matthew says. “When you’re filming in the diner, and you’re in four different universes in the same diner, and you’re filming out of order, you’ve got to change a lot of production design.”

Labels like “Universe 1,” “Universe 2,” were added to the slug lines so everyone could keep track of what was happening. 

“The joy, hopefully, is the Easter eggs,” Matthew says. “What is that one detail that changed?”

As high concept as the premise is, Redux Redux is deeply personal according to Kevin. “I have two daughters, and as a parent, losing your child is the scariest thing imaginable,” he says. “It was really born out of that.”

The film’s darkest monologues required both writers and their sister/lead actress Michaela to confront that fear head-on.

“You’re kind of facing those demons and in some ways, it can feel like exposure therapy,” says Kevin.

For Michaela, a mother of three, the challenge was relentless. With an 18-day shoot, she had to access Irene’s grief over and over, day after day.

“The cruel thing is that we shot in such a short timetable that every day, she had to deal with the loss of her daughter,” Kevin says. “As an actress, it was incredibly challenging.”

On film, the time-travel machine isn’t as cool looking as a Delorean or as practical as a phone booth. Instead, it looks handcrafted with recycled parts. In the script, it is described as “something between a refrigerator and a coffin.” Kevin took that literally and built a model out of balsa wood.

“I basically made a toy,” he laughs. “And said, ‘I’m kind of thinking something like this.’” He holds up a small wooden crate, similar to a cigar box if it only held one cigar. 

The final, full-sized prop is claustrophobic by design. It barely fits one person, let alone two. “It is way too small for two people,” Matthew says. “Whenever the two actresses are in there together, they’re absolutely jammed.”

At its core, Redux Redux isn’t really about the act of revenge, it’s about revenge becoming a dangerous obsession.

“Everybody knows what it’s like to be wronged,” Kevin says. “You’re in the shower thinking, ‘I should have said this.’ Or you’re driving to work thinking, ‘I wish I could do that.’ You’re not actually enacting revenge, but you can’t stop thinking about it.”

Irene gets to live out that mental loop, endlessly, and the film shows the toll it takes on her.

“It’s slowly poisoning you and it’s not helping anything,” says Kevin.

For the brothers, the catharsis isn’t about the kill, it’s about letting go.

Mia, played by Stella Marcus, is a teenage girl Irene saves from her daughter’s killer and slowly begins to protect. On one level, she’s a surrogate daughter. On another, she’s something far more important.

“If we only stuck with Irene on this revenge cycle, there’s a point where it can get too brutal,” Matthew says. “You don’t want to live in that space for too long.”

Mia brings youth, warmth, and rebelliousness to the story. That tension of Irene’s need for revenge versus Mia’s need for independence becomes one of the film’s emotional engines.

Late in the film, Irene reaches a universe where her real daughter is alive. The scene is brief and devastating. “When we were breaking the story, coming up with that scene was the moment where we thought, ‘I think we got a movie here,’” Matthew says.

Michaela knew it was going to be the scene everyone would be talking about, so she asked for a favor when they shot it. 

“She said, ‘Can you not call cut? We’ll just keep going back to one, and I can slowly get up to the emotional level I need,’” Kevin says.

The second take was brilliant – until a security guard walked through the background. They did another take, but it just wasn’t the same.

“We did a huge VFX shot to erase the security guard,” Matthew laughs. “Because that take was just too good.”

When asked what advice they’d give emerging screenwriters, the brothers are straightforward: make something.

“People are usually a lot happier to watch something than read something. So go off and make it if you can,” says Matthew.

Their own path began with a $125,000 indie film called Funeral Kings, made with friends and a prayer.

“It felt like the most amount of money in the world. My hands were shaking when I deposited the investor’s check into my bank account,” he says. “Now it doesn’t seem like that much, but it changed everything.”

With Redux Redux, the McManus brothers prove that high concept doesn’t require expensive spectacle. Sometimes, the most powerful stories, even in sci-fi, are the ones that are intimate and stay close to home.

Redux Redux opens in theaters Feb. 20.